The topography of thought

Whether speaking, writing, or thinking, almost everything humans do involves language. But can the semantic structure behind how people express their ideas shed light on their future success? Natural language processing of over 40,000 college application essays finds that students whose writing covers more semantic ground, while moving more slowly (i.e. moving between more semantically similar ideas), end up doing better academically (i.e. have a higher college grade point average). These relationships hold controlling for dozens of other factors (e.g. SAT score, parents' education, and essay content), suggesting that essay topography encodes information that goes beyond family background. Overall, this work sheds light on how language reflects thought, demonstrates that how people express themselves can provide insight into their future success, and provides a systematic, scalable, and objective method for quantifying the topography of thought.